Montag, 4. März 2013

I was upbeat on the second day and had breakfast at the hotel after which I headed to Cine Burkina to watch some films. I watched five short films, some of which were very good and some got me asking why they were selected for the festival. Cine Burkina is probably the main cinema hall in Ouagadougou and it had a recreation place where people can just spend time and wait for the screening of a film. After the screenings I got outside only to realize there was a mini party happening amongst the filmmakers. I tried to blend in but just couldn’t, probably because everyone had someone to talk to and I seemed not to. Not feeling up to the socialization I decided to walk to the hotel and rest and watch the next film in the evening.

As I walked around I made a few observations. Unlike Accra, Ouagadougou seemed to be sparsely populated. Most of the people transported themselves via scooters and bicycles. There were the vendors in the streets who were bent on giving me a hard time so I could buy their wares, but of course I am an Accra girl who has mastered the art of bargaining so I showed them the stuff I was made of. I was also stunned by the fact that strawberries were grown in Burkina Faso considering how hot the weather is. There are absolutely no strawberries in Ghana and so at that moment, I decided I was going to take some back to Ghana. At about 15:00hrs the rest of the Moving Africa Participants arrived and I met them for the first time. I met Didas from Uganda, a quiet and seemingly deep thinking young man, Richard from Rwanda who had an air of friendliness about him, Moses from Uganda, a very ‘serious’ journalist but also very intelligent and interesting man to chat with, Jorge de Palma from Angola who seemed to be trying to catch up with the whole world, Matrid a young fun loving lady from Kenya and Simon a very laid back and cool young man from Mozambique.

Later that evening I watched How to Steal two million by Charles Vundla Cine Neerwaya. Although I enjoyed the film, I felt that too much attention was paid to the main plot such that the subplot was not well treated. Much later my film Skin Canvas was screened at the Goethe Institut where the feedback was great. It was a totally new experience watching it again as I haven’t watched it in the past two years. I also watched some other short films from the other Moving Africa Participants and it was great to see other people’s work.

I have to say that the currency conversion in my head was very challenging because we were spending in the thousands unlike in Ghana where a thousand is a lot of money. We drove by a place called Kwame Nkrumah Avenue and at that point I couldn’t help but feel proud that someone from my home country had made so much impact that an avenue had been named after him. Another thing that got me stunned was the adherence to time. Film Screenings were on time and the people worked with time. I was stunned because Ghana is full of indiscipline and a lack of adherence to time is probably what we are most notorious for. We have gone as far as to even rename GMT as Ghana Man Time. When a Ghanaian tells you to see him at 2pm, he most probably means 4pm. So just imagine a wedding that is supposed to start at 12:00.

The Moving Africa participants and I decided to sit by the pool and get to know each other and it was a very interesting experience getting to know them.